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Friday, June 17, 2011

Sunglasses

By: Zahoor Ul Islam

It has been quite hot today in Dubai; mercury has risen to 48 Celsius.Being a desert by birth, Dubai’s summers are always like this; hot and humid.

My friends and I were going for a quick lunch to a fast food restaurant which is hardly 200 meters away from our office. Walking to a restaurant under the scorching sun at mid afternoon was quite an unwelcoming appetizer.

Upon reaching I wondered if we could build an ultimate sun filter or a super air-conditioner which could create an isolation layer or filter between earth and the sun. I shared this thought with my friends who are now quite trained in ignoring my stupid ideas like this! They are quite tuned and know when to get serious about my thoughts and when to simply ignore. However I kept thinking.

I know we humans can’t and should not do that. It won’t do any good to the earth; it will disturb the entire balance of life on the earth. So sun being uncomfortably hot, yet it is a great source of life for all of us.

I just smiled at my thought. The sun hardly appears not bigger than a coin from my point of vision; but actually much larger than the earth and all the planets in our solar system! But then I have been bestowed by God with the power of context that helps me to view it like a coin and allows me to think to work around it.

So establishing the right context between Sun and myself, the problem becomes a lot simpler; with respect to the brightness of the sun, I can simply put on sunglasses! That’s cool, isn’t it?That not just helps to reduce the intensity of the scorching sun but also makes you appear cool, a simple solution.

Reaching a simple solution requires establishing a proper context. When you have a problem, you will always find that problem comprises two elements, and there is always one element common in all the problems; which is YOU.

Most of the time we can’t switch off the sun, adjust the brightness, glare or adjust the heat, though we may have great debates on how we can achieve all of that. It is always a lot simpler to establish the proper context and identify what we can do at our end to find an easy and simple solution.

This is not so great a secret but then we fail to use this simple principle in common walks of life and while making decisions on a collective level in the society. As a nation and an individual we need to get out of complaining mentality and establish the right context and identify the options we have to find easy solutions to problems.

Meddling with natural laws to look for complex solutions will only disturb the peace of the universe; fiddling with the scorching bright sun, will only burn your fingers!